


the king in leisure

by gogollescent



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 08:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11963310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: For the prompt, "Adaire/Hella some-historical-period AU?" Hella makes good.





	the king in leisure

Hella, from the start, hated the badge. “But look at it this way,” Adaire said. “There’s a one-in-a-million chance a bullet will bounce off of it. That’s bigger than the _zero_ -in-a-million chance you had when you were just a lousy rum runner on the wrong side of the old Miss.”

She said it quietly, in case Detective Hadrian was listening. But Detective Hadrian stared straight ahead and fingered his white beaver-fur bowler. Hella didn’t care for that hat; he had come back to town in it after a spot of hot pursuit carried him out-of-state, and since then, by God, she thought she’d caught him smelling—not like moonshine, not rye liquor, either of which would be respectable, even enhancing, in an officer of the Bureau—but like wine.

It wasn’t her business what cellar he’d fallen down. “Adaire,” she said, “tell me. Did a bullet ever bounce off your head?” She rapped two knuckles on Adaire’s forehead in demonstration. Adaire ducked away, blinking, and came up again with that smile she saved, Hella knew, for times when she got confused, or was totting up interest mentally. 

“Sure,” said Adaire. “I met you, didn’t I?”

As lines went, it didn’t make any sense. Hella resisted the urge to cover Adaire’s mouth. They weren’t in an alley; they were in an office. Hadrian had started to turn his hat round and round. The only people listening were the drunks in the tank, and they all knew Agents Varal and Ducarte from _way_ back. 

On second thought—no one was listening. She decided to go for it. Adaire’s breath tickled. She had a neat full mouth, smaller than you might expect for someone who talked that fast, and Hella’s hand covered it easily, and swallowed up most of the full face too. Adaire sat obediently forward, not straightening to free herself, and her eyes over the hook of Hella’s thumb went from Hella, to Hella’s badge, in toward Hella’s hand—she was almost cross-eyed, eyelids at half-mast and shiny, a bald space pleading for a touch. Hella felt the smile go, the mouth turn serious; she dropped her hand like it held something hard and cold. But it wasn’t like that, of course. Adaire was soft all over: reliable, but soft. The opposite of armor—one extra place to hit.

“Now isn’t it best,” said Adaire, “to be a woman of the law?”


End file.
